Rather than give a talk, our main topic this month will be an
InstallFest – we’re going to show you how to install the
OpenSolaris-based distribution of your choice. We’ll have an install
server at the meeting with all of the various distributions available:

Solaris Express

Belenix

Nexenta

SchilliX

MarTux

There will be experts on-hand[1] who can help you to install and
configure your desktop or laptop, as well as a bunch of machines for
burning ISO images of these distributions, just bring along your own
blank DVD-R, CD-R or CDRW media and we’ll burn copies of OpenSolaris for
you.

We’ll also have available the latest OpenSolaris sources & compilers, so
you get to use our bandwidth for free, if you want to start
investigating the source.

We’re starting the meeting slightly earlier this month to accommodate the additional time it’ll take to install machines, but don’t worry if you can’t quite make our start time.

And, for you hardware-heads, our install server will hopefully be a
Thumper (SunFire x4500) so if you’re interested in experiencing what
48-disks-in-a-4u-box is like at full throttle, you won’t want to miss
this opportunity: we’d be happy to give an ad-hoc demo of the machine,
and what was done in OpenSolaris to support it – ZFS runs pretty nicely
on a 48-disk machine.

Thoughts and comments are welcome, and otherwise, see you on August
29th! Tell your friends, and feel free to publicise this meeting everywhere!

cheers,

tim

[1] as well as copies of the Sys Rescue CD just in case – make a backup
before we start playing with your machines!